Punjab Chief Minister Darbara Singh has long been in search of a stick with which to beat his arch rival Union Home Minister Zail Singh, and with the arrest of Dal Khalsa presidium member Harsimran Singh, the self-confessed mastermind of the September 1981 hijacking, it seems he has found it at last.

Harsimran Singh, 32, who was arrested on January 12 from the house of Harinder Pal Singh, driver for Punjab Development Minister Santokh Singh Randhawa, allegedly declared in a tape-recorded statement in the presence of senior police and intelligence bureau officers that the Dal Khalsa, an extremist and militant youth movement, received money from the Zail Singh camp as well as from some leaders of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC). According to Jullundur police officials, Harsimran Singh revealed that the September hijacking was financed with Rs 1.5 lakh collected from six donors.

The Khalistan activist alleged that he was introduced to Zail Singh through two prominent Punjab university academics who were close to the home minister. Although Harsimran Singh admitted that he had not met Zail Singh after he became home minister, he is stated to have told his interrogators that Zail Singh paid the bill for the Dal Khalsa's first press conference which was held in late 1978 in Chandigarh shortly after the militant group was launched. At that time Prakash Singh Badal, heading an Akali-Janata coalition, was chief minister of Punjab, and the Congress(I) languished in opposition.

Harsimran Singh: Involving the mighty

Naming some top leaders of the SGPC as supporters of the Dal Khalsa, Harsimran Singh is also alleged to have told the police that the movement was supported by some leaders of the Jagdev Singh Talwandi faction of the Akali Dal. "Badal always opposed us," he told the police, while Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, leader of another faction of the Akali Dal, had neither supported nor opposed them: "He has just been cool to us."

Officers Involvement: The Dal Khalsa leader, whose arrest could be something of a breakthrough in getting to grips with the complex problem of extremism in Pubjab, also named about half a dozen senior police officials and bureaucrats who, he said, had helped the movement. Police say these people are now under surveillance. A senior officer, who did not want to be named told to India today: "Harsimran provided the police with the list of those who threw bombs in various towns, committed acts of sabotage and printed and distributed pamphlets asking the army and police to revolt."

Harsimran Singh maintained that "insecurity and unemployment" were the two main reasons why he and others formed the Dal Khalsa. "The funds which kept coining to us proved to be the main force to bind us together and keep us in the movement," he is reported to have said. The Dal Khalsa, which shot into the limelight with the hijack of an Indian Airlines Boeing to Lahore last year, was formed to attain an independent sovereign Sikh nation.

As whispers of these "confessions" have done the rounds of Chandigarh's officialdom, more allegations have been heard. Last fortnight, a Congress(I) Member o( Parliament told newsmen that a top police official related to an associate of the Union home minister had freely distributed arms licences to Dal Khalsa men.

Darbara Singh: Ready to strike

Zail Singh declined to make any comment on Harsimran Singh's yet unproven allegations. But sources close to him said this was not the first time such charges were being made, and the minister had already, dealt with them decisively in Parliament when an Opposition member had similarly alleged a connection between the home minister and the Dal Khalsa.

When it was pointed out that the allegations were being made by a top Dal Khalsa activist, a senior official said there was no great difficulty in getting a man in police custody to "confess" to anything his inquisitors wanted him to say.

Darbara Singh, who has described these disclosures as "very interesting," is taking the tapes of the interrogation and a brief summary of the revelations to Mrs Gandhi. Whether the Punjab police ultimately succeed in nabbing the alleged saboteurs and propagandists of the separatist movement is another matter. While numerous surveys have shown that the demand for Khalistan is hardly taken seriously, nevertheless, the warring Congress(I) camps have found that the movement provides an excellent opportunity for feathering their own nests.

The Zail-Darbara war has already cost the state heavily. The Punjab ministry had to wait for 18 months to expand and the administration has been demoralised. A rueful joke going the rounds in the state points out that Darbara hasn't been able to do anything for the state because both his hands are tied-he needs one to hold onto his chair and the other one to keep his pugree on.

Zail Singh: Looking homeward

Two Congress leaders have met only on the most formal of occasions and even those meetings have been few. On January 18, for the first time, Darbara Singh called the home minister in the Chandigarh Raj Bhavan but even then he was careful to bring along a retinue of officers and party supporters.

Since Ms election in 1980 Darbara Singh has laboured to demolish Zail Singh's pockets of influence in the state administration - no easy task since during his tenure as chief minister Zail Singh had been thorough and painstaking in building his bureaucratic base.

Old Feud: While Darbara Singh belongs to the land-holding Jat caste and may have benefited from the rise of Jat political power in the state since the days of Sant Fateh Singh, and Zail Singh is a Ramgarhia (artisan) their squabble cannot be reduced to simple caste antagonism either. The feud between Zail Singh and Darbara Singh is a straight-forward power struggle with no ideological complications.

Zail Singh came into state politics when the princely territories that comprised the Punjab and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU) was merged with Punjab in 1957. Under the Pratap Singh Kairon government, Darbara Singh was the state home minister and both he and Zail Singh were Kairon supporters. When Kairon's supporters split, a battle to capture the Punjab Congress ensued.

Zail Singh, with Akali support, came out the winner and Darbara Singh, along with former foreign minister Swaran Singh were left out in the cold. In 1971 Zail Singh realised his long-standing ambition to become chief minister and he retained the chair through six long years despite the best efforts of Darbara Singh and Swaran Singh to unseat him.

The 1980 election brought Zail Singh into the Lok Sabha for the first time and he became the Union home minister - a shock for his opponents. With Zail Singh in the Union Cabinet and Darbara Singh on the chief ministerial gaddi, it was inevitable that the two Singhs would go for each other tooth and claw. The battle royal still rages with neither rival able to inflict a decisive blow. So far the main sufferer is the state of Punjab.

ADMINISTRATION: STABLE GOVERNMENT

Field officers in Punjab will soon find themselves back in the saddle following a recent state Government decision to direct its deputy commissioners, police officers, revenue and development officers to tour their jurisdictions on horseback.

The impetus to reinstate one of the grand old traditions of the Raj came partly from Punjab Governor Aminuddin Khan's keen interest in horse-breeding and partly from Chief Minister Darbara Singh's keen interest to reduce the state's galloping petro bills.

Punjab, which has linked over 80 per cent of its villages with roads, spends about Rs 15 crore on petrol bills annually. Since Independence the number of government vehicles has increased tenfold. Naturally, the misuse of these vehicles has also kept pace. Official cars ferry children to school, wives to kitty parties and even pet dogs to the vet.

Two years ago a Chandigarh paper front-paged a photograph of the then governor's car bringing a trunk-load of fodder into the Raj Bhavan for the governor's buffalo. Aside from a desire to rein in expenses and stop officers from horsing around with state vehicles, the Government is disturbed that high quality horses, for which the state was once famous, have been seriously on the decline for many years now.

In an effort to bring back the horse, the Government plans to organise horse shows, tent pegging and polo matches in all districts, and is also considering the establishment of stud farms. The first state-sponsored horse show will be held in Jullundur on March 27 and 28.

Darbara Singh's love for animals is not limited to horses however. The Government has also decided to import donkeys from certain Arab countries to improve the local breed. Farmers will be encouraged to use donkeys rather than tractor trailers to transport farm produce in order to conserve costly and scarce diesel fuel.

Enquiries made by India today reveal that the Government so far has not placed any import order for donkeys nor formally instructed its officers to trot out to the villages. It is hard to say how the order will be received - as yet there has been no response from the neigh-sayers in the bureaucracy.

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